I continue my look at how easy it is to find phone numbers either in search results, or on a website.  In my previous blog I discussed how pleased I was to easily find the phone numbers for an assortment of businesses directly in the search results.  Today I will tell a story of a disappointing user experience as I searched for the phone number of the car dealership that services my car. 

The other day I looked up the car dealership that services my car. I quickly found two results via a Google search.  Neither result detailed the phone number in the search results.  “No problem”, I thought.  “I’ll easily be able to find the phone number on the site.”

The screenprint of the search results. No luck finding the dealership phone number on either site.

When I clicked the first link, I got a “You must have Flash Installed” ugly error page, so I tried the second link.  For the second site, I got a “you must have active x installed” page.  I was using my work computer.  For some reason, despite several attempts to resolve, I often get Flash error messages. I see this as a good thing since I get to see first hand what users with Flash problems see.

A screenprint of the first site.

As you can see from the above screenprint, they could have easily provided general informaton about the dealership here to attempt to help non-flash users.  Instead I got an unhelpful ”Requires Flash” error message.

The error message for the 2nd site told me I needed active x

The second link gave me an amusing error message.  I love the text that says, “. . . all ‘active’ content must be loaded dynamically into a container . . .”  I’m sure the average user would understand perfectly what this means.  It could have just as easily given basic information about the dealership and linked to a troubleshooting page with the ugly technical details.  I don’t want to reconfigure my browser, all I want is the damn phone number.

I successfully pulled up the site from my home laptop. I looked for the “contact us” button. There is an unwritten rule that has come to be expected by the user. A business always has a contact us link. The user knows that this type of link provides everything there is to know about how to contact the business.

Unfortunately, an ambitious marketing person designed the site.  As is typical from Flash sites, it looked like a brochure.  To make matters worse, it played cheesy background music.  When the page loaded, my first task was to see if I could figure out how to turn off the sound.  My second task was to look for the phone number.  I looked for the contact us link.  No luck.  I tried the company info link, but it wasn’t there.  I tried the location/hours link, but it used an odd type of pop-up navigation that wouldn’t let me click the link.

I finally noticed that the address and phone number was on the top right corner of the page.  I completely missed it. I can’t say why I missed it.  Perhaps the findings from Nielsen Norman’s eye tracking study are true.  If it looks like a brochure, the user will ignore it.  We have been conditioned to avoid marketing fluff.  This is especially true for web sites. 

Screenprint of the flash site. Note the phone number in the upper right hand corner that I completely missed.

The above screenprint captures the Flash site. 

Lessons learned.

  • Put your phone number in your meta description tag (the value that a search engine uses in the search results). 
  • If you must use Flash, create a useful “Non-Flash” user page that gives basic information to the user.
  • Meet your user’s expectations by providing a useful contact us page.  Afterall, if the user can’t contact you, how can they buy from you?
  • Consider the needs of your user over the needs of your marketing director.  Gerry McGovern has a great article about this that proves this point.